If I could clarify that, it is not my intent in any of my comments today to discredit the former ombudsman. In fact, our respect for his office, for his mandate and for his ability to manage the complainant and their wishes in regard to confidentiality and how next steps should be undertaken is what we focused on.
My concern, Madam Chair, was simply to clarify that I did not have a complaint that, to my understanding, had been investigated or for which there was an undertaking to do an investigation at that stage back in March of 2018. Because we take the safety and security of the workplace to heart—this is a very important, fundamental responsibility we have—we do in fact want to make sure that the conduct of GIC appointees is looked into, and we tried to get information that would help us to determine what those next steps were.
Our role in the Privy Council Office, and my role in supporting the minister, the Prime Minister and the government in terms of managing the conduct of GIC appointees where an issue has arisen, is to provide advice and some counsel on what next steps could be taken. That was our objective in terms of trying to understand what information the ombudsman could share that would be consistent with his responsibilities as ombudsman and in protecting the confidentiality of the person who had raised some concerns and an allegation that we did not have information about.